Student Responses

In class, I wrote mostly about my dad’s library and grandpa’s library, and their interest in collecting; I’ve included my unedited class writings underneath. But, for an imagined library, I would hope for something better than what humans are limited to think of; for example (note: I’m not certain if this is true or not, but it’s something I’ve been thinking of), I would guess that humans are limited in numerous aspects, specifically areas of thought, our visualization, and theorization, by simply being human; or, confined to certain areas inherently by being human. So, even though our thought is usually conceptualized as “infinite,” it’s actually possibly really small. So, my imagined library would be something that I cannot think of, but I would guess it’s really, really cool (like think of a color you’ve never seen that exists but you cannot visualize). Maybe it transcends concepts of knowledge, or something like that. I don’t know. Actually, the whole library would be things I cannot visualize – like new colors and architecture (assuming that there is not a better alternative to physical space that hasn’t been thought of yet – think of Andre Malraux’s Imagined Library, or something in the ballpark): legitimate novelty.

class notes:

{

personal accounts instead of research papers

book collections

my dad collects lots of things, garage is ridiculous, like he buys things and says he’s gonna sell them but doesn’t, but i think he knows that too,

my mom used to do that with him but she’s been kinda different recently

my dad has a library my grandpa has a library

futility of collections, or physical collections,

extra space and money unnecessary, like books rent libraries if you need to buy it notes buy it if you want it later keep it but

i suppose I don’t really get a whole lot of anything worth from owning things?

(anecdote: like 

OR maybe not things that are easily accessible

like all books and all most anything you can buy on the internet for a little bit

(my dads stuff is like 100 dollars singularly max)

maybe a collection of really really rare?

not really get a whole lot from owning something though tbh

internet

everything i want no space no money,

BUT library personal collection and thats rare instead of infinite on the internet,

curation is a thing,

}

In Palfrey’s “Hacking Libraries,” I was interested in “data rot” and the concept of “many librarians have come to see their primary job as serving people at various stages of their lives:” “libraries will continue to be helpful guides.” While I was reading this, tones of self-defense and self-preservation lingered in my head. The problems mentioned for the internet seemed easily-fixable, and the problems mentioned for libraries seemed like they were just trying to catch up with the internet. Also, with the condescending-esque need for guidance, how will this work in the future where youth, who have internet intuition, don’t need guidance? So, my question is, do you imagine a future (not immediate) where libraries are obsolete? Instead of a future with both libraries and internet as separate, important entities, could you imagine the internet adopting the library and it’s purposes mentioned? How do you think newer generations (my generation) intuitive, intimate knowledge of technology as common will affect these issues over time?

some quotes that I liked from these essays:

“for what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order?” (Benjamin 2)

“view from the outside, on the basis of a specific recognition from within” (Bhabha 19) – (this quote isn’t interpreted bellow, but I thought it was an interesting definition worth thinking about)

“suggests that reason (if not art) rules over a cacophonous arrangement of books” (Manguel 4)

All interpretations on the concept of collections, or curation, or collecting. These made me think of Eisenstein’s “A Dialectic Approach to Film Form”, which demands that art spawns from the friction between organic and purposeful energy, but, combined with numerous common interpretations of art, the best art effectively (but not always actually) eliminates the purposeful energy and successfully encapsulates singular organic energy. Libraries are legitimate organic energy (group of books (mix of both energies) but combined, as a whole, they harbor mostly organic energy) – but, as Benjamin and Manguel suggests, organization systems – purposeful energy – attempt to limit this organic energy to serve purpose. But, I suppose, if you refuse to acknowledge this system, it wouldn’t exist and the library would be singularly magical.

My research question as of now is:

1) what holds back digitization? What are the drawbacks?

^though that could be a long paper and maybe a big questions to tackle, it might be worthwhile for me to attempt providing some insight as to where I think digitization of things/books/libraries is headed.

I think I could look at blogs and news regarding digitization, perhaps a book later when i have more sense of what specific information I’d like to acquire.

I could talk about the copyright issues these digital libraries face, what the maintenance of this digital files look like.

Through this research paper I want to see if I can provide somewhat of an “answer” as to what digitization is and why it is happening, and why it might not be happening as fast.

Research questions:

 

• How does the treatment of books across cultures reflect on the members of those societies/predict or shape group mentalities

 

• What is the relationship between the treatment of books and the treatment of people
  • Treatment of women/minorities? Portrayal of women?
  • Development of children??????

I am thinking about looking at popular fiction– focusing on specific texts (ex: for the US, I might focus on Harry Potter or The Hunger Games or 50 shades) across cultures and compare the different portrayals of women and/or minorities.

Then I can approach research from a sort of sociology influenced position, looking at studies related to how pop culture and reading influences (or does not influence) the formation of opinion.

+curation

+internet and persons

+viewing person and persons as a library

+infinite – relation between a person and infinite (library as an example of effective infinite – you literally cannot read all the books in a library bc/ time limits (death) ) (related question: if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, did it make a sound?)

what happens when the requirements for curation are eliminated? what happens when all persons can be curators?

does this change values and cannon and, if so, how?

are new curation requirements being created to replace the old?

how does curation affect creation (theoretical new values affecting creation)?

thinking about the internet (infinite library void of curation – effective desert)

looking at micro communities as a manageable example of curation (I wanted to look at fanzine culture because of the lack of harsh money limitation associated with it (internet link) ) – visiting the ABC No Rio Zine Library and Barnard College Zine Library and

viewing the question from a usually ignored perspective, like a research paper most would see as not worth their time, and gleaning new things from that – random as a tool (also random infinite relation)

looking at history trends in librarians and seeing if anything paralleled this situation in the past

looking at tumblr, twitter, instagram

I had two rough ideas that I could research:

1. I could look at school libraries and how their content has changed as the expectation of what education should be has changed throughout history.
2. The rise in private libraries and how they might’ve changed the way knowledge within books were thought of, as well as accessibility.

For my first idea I could compare pictures of architecture of older school libraries vs. modern to get a feel for what the architecture might say about the attitude surrounding knowledge of the time. Then I could look at databases and see what knowledge has been censored throughout history, or look through old education magazine editions and see the differences in approaches to teaching that are advertised.

For my second, I could look at the rise of private libraries going back to the renaissance and see how books were gotten a hold of before that. I could look at who has access to them and what knowledge was considered worthy to curate.

 

Through the selection of books they curate, how have libraries historically portrayed “truth?” By viewing their catalogs holistically, how do different libraries portray different truths? Should libraries preserve all types, or specific kinds, of truth (e.g. propaganda)? What is the role of a librarian as a purveyor of truth? How have we, as information consumers and now curators, taken on that role ourselves? How has that role changed and adapted with the shifting permanence of text, as we moved from using mainly physical books to constantly changing databases (such as Wikipedia)? In a time when CNN (a reputable news outlet) publishes stories with the title: “ALLEGATION ABOUT SUSAN RICE UNMASKING IMPROPERLY IS “FALSE” ” (with the word “false” specifically put into quotations), what is the sociocultural and greater historical role of knowledge/truth collection?

How does the materiality of zines guide the content within?

How does an ephemeral zine vs a more permanent zine differ in content and form, purpose and creator? (zines vs books, art vs zines)

 
I went to Fales last Friday, and must admit that I was quite overwhelmed by the sheer number of zines. I need to figure out which zines are important for me to see, if any, and how I can best combine writing about the materiality of zines with the content. I would also like to interview archivists, although I am somewhat unsure of how to go about this, and a few friends of mine who write for zines.

Questions:

1. Why is the motif of classical architecture repeated so much throughout the design and building of a library throughout America?
2. In areas that are not considered the “west” are there library that emulate that sort of “classical architecture” and why they chose to do that instead of emulated their ancient library architecture?
3. How do “local libraries” contrast their architecture to “institutional libraries like universities and big cities”?

For research I will most likely reference books, research papers of institution standing, as well as historical background and sociological contexts. It will be a mesh of studying the architecture of libraries as well as the cultural implications of such architecture for the people, the designers, and the public.

Current Guiding Questions

Main question: How can libraries serve their communities better?

     Subquestion I : Should libraries advertise/promote the services they provide?

     Subquestion II: Should libraries offer unusual services like providing tech incubators and hog-butchering workshops if these services serve the needs of their communities?

     Subquestion III: Will increasing funding for libraries allow libraries to do more for their communities?

  

Current Research Strategies

-I’ll find reports on the effectiveness of promoting library services to increase the public’s awareness of library services.

-I’ll examine what library services are in high demand with patrons.

-I’ll examine articles that describe the impact of unusual library services on serving community needs.

-I’ll look at papers that examine if government library funding impacts the ability of libraries to serve their communities.

 

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

When the Duke in “As You Like It” withdraws into the Forest of Arden, he makes this peculiar comment about how he can find a library in nature. I was struck by this comment when I read the play a few years back and again when it was quoted in Alberto Manguel’s “Library at Night.”

Can the cell be a stand in for the universal library? What is the relationship between biology and libraries?

I plan on attacking this questions from two angles: biology and fiction. From the biology side, I’m particularly intrigued by the recent accomplishment of encoding a book in the DNA of a cell. Since the molecules that make up DNA are much smaller than the bits and bytes inside of any computer/digital device, you can fit a lot more data in a cell. I’ve read two research papers and one book on this topic. Could this lead to being able to have a universal library? From the fiction side, I hope to discuss some of the perils of the universal library from Borges’s “Library of Babel.”

I’m a little nervous about approaching this questions from two drastically different directions but I guess this is what you do in Gallatin…

• What should be available in prison libraries? What is commonly available?
• What are some of the things that limit what is available in prison libraries?
• How important are prison libraries in influencing the rehabilitation of prisoners? Can they be detrimental to the prisoners?

I’m going to try to answer these questions by checking if there are any common standards or regulations prisons are held to concerning what can and should be allowed in prison libraries. This will also lead me to the important actors in the debate.

Then I’ll use case studies and data to determine if, in general, these standards are respected. If they aren’t, I’ll find out the reasons for this.

I’ll also look to see if there is any research that has been done on the potential impacts that prison libraries actually have on those who use them. This will likely let me know if the content that people feel should be in prison libraries is actually beneficial and if the content that people feel shouldn’t be in prison libraries is actually detrimental.

How do we measure the success of a library? How has it changed and is it changing as we are moving from physical to digital libraries?

I’d like to focus on the different branches of the NYPL in answering these questions.
Research strategies: looking into foot traffic before and after digitalization, looking into website traffic, interviewing librarians, reading texts about their idea of the success of libraries.

How does the ideology of “race” which has divided America correspond with library access and access to knowledge in general?

 

How institutional racism limits the access to libraries in universities such as New York University, Columbia, Yale, etc.?

 

In what ways can we see institutional racism, restricting the access to higher education libraries fostering the economic divide in America?

 

Possible research methods:

 

First I will start off by looking at the socially constructed idea of race and how it plays into the educational divide which then leads to the economic gap in America.

• Look at libraries in higher educational institutes like NYU vs. a CUNY school
  • Look at the racial demographic of the students at NYU and a CUNY school like Kingsborough? Or Hunter?
• Look at libraries in lower economic neighborhoods vs. middle-class/upper-class neighborhoods
  • By looking at libraries in lower income areas, I hope to find some quantitative data on past SAT scores and compare them with upper/ middle-class neighborhood

One of the texts, I started to look at:

 

http://www.ala.org/offices/olos/olosprograms/jeanecoleman/05berman

 

Guiding Questions:

What will the relationship be between print and digital books in X years?

This question will really be answered by investigating the next one.

What is the object/goal of reading and having books? Which medium is more successful in helping you to this goal? Can you even make a distinction between the two?

To find answers, I’d start with the earliest philosophers talking about reading (primary texts) and go from there. I’ve also conducted some interviews with figures in the publishing industry for an earlier project so I might find something there. I’d also just think about it, observation I guess. Finally to determine if one medium is more successful than the other I’d look at scientific studies.

What roll did the press play in determining the sales of these two mediums?

In order to find answers I’d probably look at the articles that were written when eBooks first started to gain a market share (Background research) as well as scientific studies taking about the benefits of having a product reviewed by the press (sociological data).

 

 

In class we talked about the merits of both digitization and traditional libraries and if there is a room where both could work together. One of the things that challenged the idea that digitization is all-good is that we still don’t have the appropriate technology to fully implement our ideas about how libraries and digital copies of books would work together. With my essay being on the digitization of borges library and its limits in digitized form, I hear constantly here and there the limitation of todays technology. Though I think there is truth in this, that limitation of our technology limits our ability to create the fantastical library, I think that the past also plays a huge role in limiting us. The pre-existing networks, copyright etc all contributes to why we cant really “change” as drastically as we hope/or don’t hope.

It seems to me that there can really be no objective categorizing because our biases are the lens through which we perceive and interact with the world. I’ve always held the belief that objectivity is not something to be reached or to be found, but something that exists within all of us. I think that listening to all subjective opinions and reaching a consensus is the way we can create a somewhat “objective” method of categorization. I think of it like taking the best of all sides and from there we can find a solution. The problem that may arise with that is the fact that some views are so different from each other that sides will feel that there can be no agreement can be reached. Also, who gets to sit at these discussions? I feel as though the topic of discussion would be reviewed again for it’s importance. Is it better to reach that consensus or just remove categories all together? Also, I’m confused about the statement of gay and lesbian studies being what homosexuality is and queer theory being what homosexuality does. At first I related it to “theory vs practice”, but my confusion came from the fact that the word “theory” in queer theory actually refers to a practice. Can you explain how queer theory is a practice instead of a theory like the name suggests?